Wednesday, November 1, 2023

This Is the End!

Time's up, light pens down!

You did it... we are at the end of another great month of the RetroChallenge! Despite the limited number of entries, we had great participation this year, which is the way we really like it.

I will always remember this RetroChallenge as the one where I completely ignored my project and instead met up with urbancamo on his visit to Southern California. We did a version of "October Offline" as we checked out the USS Midway Museum, ate a bunch of Mexican food, and went to an (American) football game to see the Los Angeles Rams and Ice Cube. What a great time, and a great guy to co-host this event with!

As promised, if you participated in the challenge, you can vote for the winners. Take a look at the project links in the Entrants List and then cast your vote on the RC2023/10 ballot. Make sure to get your vote in on or before Tuesday, November 7 (conveniently Election Day here in the USA), and we will award prizes based on the vote and the organizer's favorites. urbancamo, ep00ch, and an ACMS board member will be spending next couple of weeks reviewing and writing up all of the projects. Stay tuned for results!

mannequin repairing radio on aircraft carrier
Radio Repair room on the USS Midway... at least somebody is getting their project done!

Monday, October 16, 2023

RC2023/10 Halftime Update!

We have a small group of contenders this year and it is nice to see that they are nearly all making great progress. I also really appreciate the variety of projects this year. If you are making progress and have some blog posts we missed, let us know in the comments.

Mousepad prizes have been ordered, and we can expect to have a few prizes from the Australian Computer Museum Society as well!

Here is the halftime update (after the break), or just keep an eye on the RC2023/10 Entrants List!

Sunday, October 1, 2023

RC2023/10 IS ON!

RetroChallenge 2023/10 has begun!

It's the 1st of October somewhere, we have a few solid RetroChallengers, and I expect we will have many more joining us this week. It's not too late to enter! NOW, GET STARTED!

urbancamo, ep00ch and Adrian from ACMS will be working hard to keep everyone updated and get you timely halftime and final summaries and results.

Shout-out to the Australian Computer Museum Society for incorporating the RetroChallenge into their membership activities.

Friday, September 15, 2023

Announcing RetroChallenge 2023/10!

We are happy to announce RetroChallenge for the month of October 2023! Brought to you again by hosts urbancamo, ep00ch, and now members of the Australian Computer Museum Society board! Thanks to Adrian Franulovich from ACMS for offering to assist with keeping things rolling along smoothly.

About RetroChallenge

In a nutshell, the RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month.

The event is very much open to interpretation… individuals set their own challenges, which can range from programming to multimedia work, hardware restoration to exploring legacy networking, or just plain fooling around. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just so long as you do it.

Take a look at the "rules" for the RetroChallenge for basic guidelines.

RetroChallenge 2023/10 Theme Categories

We have two theme categories for this event: Endurance Challenge and October Offline. These category will be judged and awarded separately from the standard entries. If your project qualifies, enter it into one of the theme categories! Otherwise, enter in the General category and just do your own retro thing. Check out last year's List of Entries for some examples.

October Offline

Take a break from online social media!

Enhance your mental health by taking a break from online social media. Use the opportunity to check out a local makerspace, computer museum, or computer user-group meeting and share your project with real people. Maybe get your old computers fixed up and lead a scout meeting about vintage computers, or, you could base your project around some need of your local computer museum. Whatever it is, give up social media and be truly social!

Endurance Challenge

Really use your retro-computer for a month!

Getting back to the ideals of the orginal RetroChallenge, we are challenging you to use your vintage computer for a month doing normal stuff like word processing, budgeting, sending emails, surfing the web, gaming, dot matrix printing, etc. Document what you did, what works, what doesn't, and what solutions you found. We will want to see lots of update posts, but we don't expect much engineering. The Captain's Quarters II BBS has kindly provided a forum as an option for your low-bandwith progress logs. As a final nod to the original RetroChallenge, the best blogger for this category will be based on popular vote!

Prizes

ACMS will be digging up some prizes and we may have some RC 2023/10 mousepads for the "winners".

How to Enter

Fill out the Entry Form for Contestants and save the link at the end in case you want to update or change your information. Let us know in the comments if you have any issues signing up.

Friday, September 1, 2023

RC2022/10 Results

The popular vote results for RC2022/10 are in! Eek... we almost started RC2023/10 without the write-up for 2022.

Remember, if you didn't finish the month but made progress on a project you should be proud. If you did finish, you should be very proud.

Stay tuned for details on the RC2023/10!

Results (grouped by category, then grouped by final status, no particular order besides that) after the break:

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Finish Line!

Time's up, soldering irons down!

We did it! Another great RetroChallenge with some fine projects and great participation. Urbancamo and I were especially impressed with how few non-starters we had with nearly everyone makig some progress on their retrocomputing projects.

Now, I promised we would have a vote for the Endurance Challnge, but with only two participants this doesn't make sense. Instead, we will open the voting up to the General Category too! So, get your vote in on or before Tuesday, November 8 (conveniently Election Day here in the USA), and we will award prizes based on the vote and the organizer's favorites. urbancamo and ep00ch will be spending next couple of weeks reviewing and writing up all of the projects. Stay tuned for results!

If you participated in this RetroChallenge, you can cast your vote on the RC2022/10 ballot after reviewing the project links in the Entrants List.

Sunday, October 16, 2022

RC2022/10 Halftime Update!

With 30 solid entries we have witnessed a great start to RC2022/10! There are some really cool obscure systems at the fringe of the 8 bit era represented here, and plenty of 16 bit projects. I am really enjoying the cross-over connectivity or emulation projects from barely retro systems to very retro devices. We are glad to see great progress from so many of the participants!

Mousepad prizes have been ordered, and I expect to have a few tech tools available for winners as well:

Here is the halftime update (after the break), which we have miraculously provided at halftime! If you are making progress, and have some blog posts we missed, let us know in the comments.